# Example of Google's censorship bot



## David

He's a first hand example of Google's censorship initiative, albeit a relatively minor one.

I just received this notice of an AdSense Publisher Policy Violation.






We've violated the policy against "gambling and games-related content" for a legitimate news story from June 2014 about gambling in Maryland:









						Casino Windfall Swells Perryville Budget, But Money is Already Drying Up
					

This story is part of a series on the lottery and casinos in Maryland called "All In: Maryland's Big Bet on Gambling."  By NICHOLAS DUCHESNE, QUINN KELLEY and SARAH SEXTON  PERRYVILLE, Md.—With a $5,000 grant from the town of Perryville in…



					somd.com
				




This is known as demonitization in that by depriving authors of revenue for their work, they tend to give up or move to other more favorable topics. Other more egregious examples are pushing undesirable content way down in the search results or blocking it from the search altogether.

In the old days, they used to demonitize your whole site if you had ONE/1 page which they say violated their terms.

As a real world example, search on Youtube now for "_vaccines are harmful_" and you will see nothing but videos about how full of crap people are who say some vaccines may cause problems or be dangerous. Probably similar results for anything the establishment can label a "conspiracy theory."


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## vraiblonde

It's unlikely that's deliberate and not just stupidity.  Their bot should be able to tell the difference between a gambling offer and a news story about gambling.  I have no doubt that if you dispute it and they have a human look at it, it will be reinstated.  

The point, however, is that #1, a smart bot would know the difference in content; and #2, businesses have become reliant on Google and other tech companies to promote/monetize their information, and they are whimsical about banning content.

They are practically screaming for an antitrust lawsuit.


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## David

vraiblonde said:


> a smart bot would know the difference in content


I've had GMAIL flag email sent from Google to me flagged as SPAM over and over. They can't even tell that their own email is not SPAM.


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